As John Santoro tearfully spoke for the last time in court to the girlfriend he sexually assaulted last summer, the Rome man’s final words could be interpreted in two ways.

Perhaps they were an expression of Santoro’s regret for lost love, as he described in Oneida County Court.

Or maybe, as prosecutors believe, they were a warning of the insatiable craving for power and control that has always defined Santoro’s history with the women he abused.

“While I will suffer, I will suffer on my own,” 25-year-old Santoro said to the victim Thursday, moments before he was sent to prison for 17 to 19 years. “I will never forget the reason why I am where I am when I wake up every morning.”

Then Santoro wished the woman the “absolute best in life” before ending with, “I love you… I always have, and I always will.”

Judge Barry M. Donalty replied to Santoro’s remarks by saying, “People can take it for what it’s worth.”

But as far as Donalty was concerned, Santoro was the “personification of evil” and a “classic psychopath” who “represents to me the ultimate danger to people in society.”

The prosecutor, First Assistant District Attorney Dawn Catera Lupi, also said she saw through Santoro’s efforts to intimidate those women he claims to love.

“She is still terrified of the defendant,” Lupi said of the victim, who was held against her will and sexually assaulted for hours at Santoro’s residence on First Street last June.

That’s why the judge issued a 40-year order of protection for Santoro to never contact the woman until 2054.

Santoro always maintained his innocence and described the victim as a liar up until he pleaded guilty in December to first-degree rape and criminal contempt, as well as first-degree escape for briefly breaking out of the Oneida County jail.

But in the end, Santoro admitted to something he claimed he never did, instead of facing the prospect of life in prison if he was convicted after trial and sentenced as a persistent felony offender.

Although Santoro called the victim “the most beautiful human being I’ve ever known in my life,” his prepared remarks came only after the woman said in court that she feared she was going to die at Santoro’s hands during a 15-hour nightmare.

“I was alive, but barely living,” she said. “I was attacked and violated by my own boyfriend … However, I am alive and for that I am forever grateful.”